There have conventionally been proposed various seatbelt retractors which remove slack of webbing in case of an emergency such as vehicle collision or the like.
For instance, US Laid-open Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0218803 discloses a seatbelt retractor which includes a tensioning drive configured to rotate a seatbelt spindle in a seatbelt-wind-up direction at the time of vehicle collision and a supply pipe provided for the tensioning drive and mounted on a C-shaped carrier which houses the seatbelt spindle there inside in a rotatable manner. When a gas generator provided at front end of the supply pipe generates gas in response to vehicle collision, the gas pressure causes the tensioning drive to push and drive a plurality of thrust elements housed in the supply pipe.
The thus activated plurality of thrust elements makes an advance inside the supply pipe so as to get engaged with a drive wheel and rotate the drive wheel. Thereby, the rotation of the drive wheel consequently rotates the seatbelt spindle in the seatbelt-wind-up direction via an inertia coupling. Further, regarding the drive wheel constituting the tensioning drive, both ends of the drive wheel are rotatably supported by a retaining plate and a retaining cap mounted on the retaining plate and rotatably held between them with respect to rotation axis direction.